… a beautiful life

Sandy ego

I’m back! My only excuse is I have been busy (like all of you!). Down to San Diego, up to Valencia and all the chores involved with both houses, as well as the new car, is stretching every minute four or five times.

But here I am with the latest updates. I have to admit the craziness in the world outside our doors has me a bit on edge, but that’s because I am high strung. It is just a new excuse to be nervous. 😀

As I may have mentioned before, there are two new projects in the works.

One is buying an investment property in Downtown San Diego (which we have fallen in love with) and the other is a new company that I have been putting together for the past year.

We are making slow but steady progress on both, but it has meant stealing time from other things, like blogging and finishing two knitting projects that are ready to be assembled.

Not my photography, however. I take the D610 with the 16-85 mm lens wherever I go and so new series and sets are always in the works.

I will be heading down to San Diego again next week and continuing to chronicle my exploration of the city and the greater metro area (which are both complex and vast) as well as experimenting with new ways of taking pictures for different purposes.

You saw one, my last post (I blink …) and I will be talking about another new technique next post.

Meanwhile, here are pictures of the Gaslamp Quarter of Downtown. There are five “Quarters” (clearly they don’t mean fourths but areas).

The Gaslamp is the oldest part of the city and the most bustling and active. It is filled with bars, restaurants, mom & pop shops, dance spots, theaters and a vibrant street life. It is a maze of fun and energy.

I hope you can get a sense of that from these shots, which are just a fraction of the ones I took on several days wandering around looking at investment condos.

San Diego is experiencing the kind of explosive growth that Los Angeles went through about 20 years ago.

No one can buy property in DTLA for less than $2mm these days, even for a dinky apartment.

Those prices are approaching NYC’s, which are now astronomical.

But DTSD is still affordable. You can get a 1500 sq ft loft for under one million dollars.

Next time I get a chance, I will show you pictures I took of the most affordable part of the city, close to the water in what is called the East Village Quarter.

It looks nothing like the East Village in Manhattan, but it has real sea breezes so you feel as if you are at the beach all the time. And people are pretty proud of its edgy urban hipster environment.

If you have any spare money at all and live in SoCal, DTSD is the place in which to invest, imho.

There is construction going on all over the place. The San Diego “elders” are truly devoted to making the city the best in the US. They are doing a wonderful job.

I had been there a couple of decades ago because my father-in-law was friends with the owner of the Del Coronado hotel, and so the family would go down and spend a couple of weeks there every summer. But when my FIL passed away, we stopped going so I hadn’t been back to SD for quite awhile.

When Deanna and Al moved to La Jolla last summer, we saw the area with fresh eyes and wow! Now it is my favorite California city. Before it was Oakland. Well, Oakland is still pretty fantastic. So it’s a tie now, LOL.

I have some questions about how you process your photos – they are all so vibrant with strong lines, great light and shadow – everything pops out beautifully and comes to life – I enjoy seeing them large. Good luck with the investment, it’s always fun doing the research and the viewing till you find what works best. I might be heading to Spike Africa next time we are there.

Firstly, I shoot in RAW with three Nikon cameras (D5200; D610; and D800). The lens I prefer is 24-85 mm VR from Nikon. Just a great versatile lens with its own anti-shake capability.

Then I take them into Lightroom and make most of the adjustments, like bringing down the highlights and open the shadows, color correction, etc. I turn the NEFs (RAW files) into TIFFs at 300 ppi and take those into Photoshop.

In Photoshop I make further adjustments. Sometimes I mask out flaws, make color adjustments with curves. Those I then take into Topaz and give them special effects. The final files are JPEGS at 72 ppi.

That’s it! The program that is taking the most time is PhotoShop because they are always adding new tools.

It’s a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy San Diego on your next trip. I love it!